‘Our family is devastated’: EPCC trustee who has now lost 6 relatives to virus calls for ‘true shutdown’

EL PASO, Texas -- An El Paso mother and grandparent is now mourning the loss of six family members to Covid-19 after the recent deaths of her aunt and uncle.

"This morning at 12:30 a.m. we lost another wonderful man to Covid-19," Bonnie Soria Najera wrote Sunday in a Facebook post. "My Tio Louie and my dad weren’t only cousins, they were best buds. My cousin Joey and I just got off the phone reminiscing on how our dads were always together and never lost that bond. Our family is devastated to have lost a 6th family member."

Bonnie Soria Najera, an El Pasco Community College trustee, first lost her mother in May and father in June before contracting the virus herself. Her condition worsened and required hospitalization at which point she thought she was going to die.

Shortly after Najera was discharged from the hospital her cousin and aunt became the third and fourth family members to die due to Covid-19.

But things took another turn for the worse within the last week. Najera's other aunt died last Monday and her uncle died over the weekend.

"Like we don't catch a break," Najera said. "It's like one thing after another. And I know people have questions like did they have this mass gathering or something, were they together. This has happened over a lapse of a long time. And we weren't together. We were very careful. And yet it still happened."

Now six months since she lost her first family member, Najera is frustrated with recent political fighting as debate over a shutdown in El Paso rages both in public and in the courts.

"Even our elected officials, I find it so infuriating that while our county judge is trying to do his part and shut down then you've got all these people fighting. What is there to fight about? How can you not get that we need this? I know that our economy needs it. We all get that. And we're all going to struggle. But we're keeping it open at the cost of what, more lives? It's just not fair. It's just not right. We need a shutdown, a true shutdown."

With Thanksgiving and Christmas looming, Najera worries about what's next for El Paso as it remains in the national spotlight as a Covid-19 ground zero. She's encouraging families not to gather for the holidays.

"You have the opportunity to take care of yours and make sure that they can have a next year, a next birthday. We don't have that. If it was my friends I would ask please, don't do it. You don't want to be in our shoes."